What’s next? Chapter 6 is likely going to begin in 2018, I was hoping to get to it faster but I think I really need to finish up my scifi comic Mare Internum first, so I’m going to prioritize a bit. If you haven’t already, the Meek mailing list will send you an email as soon as updates begin, and the generic Shingworks mailing list (emails rarely) will let you know of any other upcoming news, books, special sales, etc for the upcoming holiday season.

I also launched my first anthology called Alloy (accepting submissions through 10/27): an all-ages comic anthology about mixed-race experiences. If you’d like to submit a story, both myself and my asst editor Kiku will be working with chosen contributors to create a beautiful and meaningful book for all types of readers… hope to be working with some of you soon.

Until then you’ll just see this page upon landing, and I’ll be making improvements to the site behind the scenes as well cuz I do that. You can still buy Meek books and such at the store. I might update here with a bold *edit* text at the top of this box in case of some pressing news, but if not, hope to see you at Mare Internum for as many updates as I can handle until the story is done: then after that it’s just Meek updates for the forseeable future :]

This is indeed looking interesting as a development, though – for all his faults, I think Luca’s not as straightforward as Rana believes him to be. Her paranoia might turn itself into reality with this, though :/

Who is he? Well, he is the same person we saw with Rana in the opening of this chapter. And here, when Rana is talking about her father and says “*He* hates me,” this person replies “*I* don’t, Rana. *I* love you.” This seems to imply that this is a version of her father that Rana has in her mind, which makes the interaction she has with him at the beginning of the chapter reeeeeeeally interesting….

Anyway, this is one of three versions of the emperor that we’ve seen in this chapter alone: this one, the real man himself, the version the real emperor argues with before his chat with MeltyTiger. It makes me wonder just how vividly Rana perceives this imagined character, ranging from a fantasy she consciously indulges in as a coping strategy, to a full-blown delusion/hallucination serving as another of several devices supporting the theme of Rana being like her father in some unsettling ways.

I THINK, but am not sure, that he might be a manifestation of what Rana used to see her father as. Much like how Luca has conversations with his “old self” regarding Dagre. Though, if I recall, they DO have a pretty romantic first scene, so maybe not. However, I think his sudden hi/bye tendency and the fact that he only shows up when nobody else is around suggests to me it’s a similar thing to what Luca sees on the bridge and in front of his bedroom door.

How probable is that this guy simply loves Rana and wants to do whatever she wants and believes that Luca killed his wife?

VS

How probable is that this guy is angling to get close to the emperor’s daughter for nefarious means?

Rana has misinterpreted information, he thought Luca was beating Phe and then killed her, when we know it wasn’t like that. Also the Caris emissaries would have been IDIOTIC to assassinate Phe, even if Luca thinks it was them.

Hmyes, interesting. “The Emperor Must Die.” Abbreviated that’s “TEMD”. Sounds like “tamed”. Taming is a form of training used to make wild animals more managable. Managable. Man… Manager. Of course! Managers are in charge of other people. Other people, indeed. I think I know what will happen next! These “Other People”, which when abbreviated is “OP” (internet slang for “overpowered”, suggesting a superiority in strength) may have realized their secret potential to overthrow the emperor! You may now gasp at my astute observation.

It’s probably my suspicious mind, but this guy seems very suspicious to me. Here we have a young girl/woman whose mother has recently died, whose father is absent at best and so deep in his raging grief that when he’s home he can’t communicate with his children. That girl also happens to be the eldest daughter of the emperor and the emperor and his son are soon off to war. Hmmm…. Can we say ‘grooming’ here? I wouldn’t be at all surprised is Tom Selleck wannabe is using Rana to get the throne through her.

I mean, it COULD be all romantic and Romeo and Juliet and all, but a guy who homes in on a lonely girl who has lost all her support systems? Duuude… Pull the other one, it got bells on.

He probably is an agent of some kind, yeah. That said, Rana doesn’t seem to be hopelessly naive – she probably knows she was being groomed to some extent. But she was already suspicious of her father even before anything happened, and it sounds like she was considering having him assassinated for a while now. As we saw with her brother, she’s already somewhat ruthless on her own, and her assessment of her father’s instability is correct even if she’s arrived at the wrong conclusions about it.

I’m assuming she’s had lengthy conversations with Dream Guy about why her father needs to go, and how there’s no realistic scenario where that goes down peacefully. Clearly he’s emotionally manipulating her to some degree, but even from a purely logical standpoint there doesn’t seem to be any better course of action. Luca is a threat to innocent people, and seems to be a threat to his own family as well.

Hell, even to a neutral spy it’d seem like the honest truth was that Luca killed Phe for his own reasons – because why would Caris do so when they’re the ones trying to sue for peace, and apparently openly consider Luca to be dangerously unstable?

Yeah… and of course it’s entirely possible that the grooming went the other way. As you’ve said, Rana is pretty ruthless in and of herself, and she might’ve selected Dream Guy as her handy accomplice using herself as bait… Although.. she DID have a nice erotic dream about him, so she is attracted to him.. but being the ruthless, aggressive, patricidal hothead that we all know and love.. that is, that you all know and love, since I don’t like her, not one bit.. being the ruthless bint she is, I don’t see why she wouldn’t use him for both bed and as a handy tool to assassinate her father.

(the drawback of having a Masters in History is that one sees Messalinas and Lucretia Borgias in every sitcom and comic strip)

Given Luca’s behavior toward his own children, both before and after Phe’s death, and how he’s perfectly willing to risk his country and his family on ambiguous power from a leaky-mouthed tiger spirit, I think that’s a tad harsh. Luca hasn’t exactly been a bastion of emperorly and fatherly grace and competency.

That is, however, only my opinion; I won’t try to stop you or your opinions. Just offering mine as a counterpoint.

I would agree, so far as to say that she’s still a bit immature. Perhaps it can be blamed on the weird environment she grew up in.

For me, it seems kind of petty to want to murder the emperor, just because he won’t let you marry your sweetheart. Also, it doesn’t seem like she’s thought it through very carefully. First of all, there’s the difficulty of pulling it off, and then if she succeeds, where does that leave her? Does she think she will become the new ruler? Is there any scenario where she doesn’t wind up getting executed for a traitor?

Personally, I would go the route of running away to Caris, or perhaps an even more distant country.

I don’t think it’s “petty.” Rana is staying at a fortress with staff that has no idea how to do anything because the original, knowledgeable staff were all put to death. She believes Luca may have killed Phe, and maybe used her death to move on Caris and destroy everything in his wake. He is the head of the empire and he is volatile and dangerous. Her boyfriend is a soldier and has probably seen at least a couple of his friends die for inane reasons (like that sailor Luca sent to drown at the beginning of the chapter)–and even if he’s just a low rank, even if he doesn’t tell her what he’s seen, Rana must know what he’s been through. She has a million totally valid reasons why a coup may be necessary to stop her father. And, if her face at the end of Chapter 2 says anything, she has been thinking about this option since Phe’s funeral, which seems like it was a couple months ago–hardly a spur-of-the-moment thing!

And, even considering that this arranged marriage is what pushes her to accept, it’s not just that Luca won’t let her marry who she wants. Luca intends to send her away because she is a nuisance and she has the guts to stand up to him. He’s also invoking old Pasori tradition when Luca himself had married a non-Pasori against tradition, which is a big asshole thing to do honestly, and I think it shows just how little he seems to care about Rana.

She can run away to Caris, sure, but that only saves her own skin. What about everyone else under Luca’s heel? If Rana leaves, like Luca wants her to, who’s going to do anything about him?

Yeah, she’s Santri, like Pinter. Given what’s on the wiki (http://wiki.shingworks.com/Pasori) the Pasori would not have liked Luca’s relationship with Phe, nor that they had three biracial children together. I think I remember hearing that kids with mixed Pasori ancestry were/are rare because of Pasori xenophobia.

Since her culture (apparantly) doesn’t recognize female rulers, it would be safe to say that even if Luca and Suda were dead, her husband would be emperor, not she. So even if she isn’t executed for patricide, the best case scenario would be that Dream Guy is the next emperor and she his wife. But that is what she, I assume, wants. More likely scenarios would be that a) the assassination attempt fails, Dream Guy gets horribly executed and she gets locked up in some tower for the rest of her life or something, b) they succeed in killing Luca, Suda becomes emperor and has not other option but to execute Dream Guy and punish his traitorous and patricidal sister accordingly, c) they succeed in killing Luca, Suda tries to protect his father and gets killed too, Rana throws a wobbler because she didn’t want Suda dead, and then one Luca’s generals and/or some head of some other tribe steps up, kills Dream Guy and Rana, marries Hyla (or ‘marries’ her to his ten year old son or something) and becomes emperor and after his death his son and Hyla become emperor and empress.

But really, the possibilities are endless – just read up on your Roman emperors. Fascinating but always messy.

In no realistic scenario I can think of, however, will Rana come up on top. For which, I confess, I feel nothing but Schadenfreude.

Yeah, I’m thinking that a general would take over- no way would they let some wannabe boyfriend become the new emperor. And pretty much everybody would die.

Lauren- those are good points, and I think the empire would definitely be better off if Luca dies. I guess it was just the marriage thing, and Rana running off to her tower in a panic, that made me think “immature”.

As an aside, I’m wondering how likely it is that the boyfriend is actually Big Bad Kitteh in disguise. Whoever comes to power, I suspect the Dagre will be whispering in their ears.

My thoughts, too. Suda may be very popular among the common people, but the military are not going to take him seriously.

Come to think about it, it would not be surprising if the plot to off the Emperor were actually orchestrated by some disaffected general who plans to stage a coup to oust Suda afterwards (denouncing him as “unfit to lead the country in times of war” or such) and become the country’s leader himself.

Y’know.. If you look at all those revolutions of say, the past 250 years: the French Revolution, the European revolutions of the 1850’s, the Russian Revolution, the ‘Great Stride Forward’ of Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s ‘rebellion’… they all started with some people ‘taking initiative’ and deciding that Some People Had To Die So The Rest Of Us Can Live In Utopia. Of course, Utopia is a pipe dream, and during it’s pursuit, the streets always, literally, ran with blood.

I take some comfort in the thought that those who were first to shout ‘off with their heads’ inevitably landed under the guillotine or in a mass grave in the gulag themselves. It’s all a matter of time, really.

Well, I mean, the streets are about to run red with blood anyway, in this case. Already has if you count how many of his own people Luca’s already killed because of his paranoia. He forced a man to commit suicide as he watched! Then he made a joke about it! That’s fucked up!

I don’t think Rana, her boyfriend and anyone else who might be joining them are looking for a utopia. I don’t even think Rana’s intention is to usurp him and become the new leader of the territories. They just want the guy leading the nation off the deep end to not do that anymore, which is not really the same situation as any of your examples.

That’s a very simplistic and judgemental view on historic revolutions though. No wonder, you’re putting them all into a bucket and start shaking.

In fact the streets often were already as bloody as can get anyway.
Historic change is only brought about by overcoming forces in power which resist it. That was true for the revolutions which brought about todays “parliamentary democracies”, as well as the younger scoialist, anarchist or communists ones. There were also rather peaceful ones by the way… take Indian independence, ovecoming of apartheid or Portugal. But most often revolutions start by people deciding to let others starve or get them executed because you know, they want to keep their privileges and positions of authority.

A just and equal society (“Utopia”) is not a pipe dream, but a necessity. Violence as such is no necessity but often a by-product of social change. It’s never one-sided. The terror of let’s say, the french revolution, is a joke comparing to the terror of centuries of absolute monarchy and feudalism. The latter does not justify the first in any way. But it is an important part of explaining it. :)

Well, Luka has nobody else t blame but himself- the usual gfate of tyrants who start executing their own people wholesale is to be murdered.

I mean seriously, how would YOU deal with a Caligula or Commodus? With no checks and balances, the only way to get rid of a tyrannical, murderous ruler is assassination. So, maaaaaye if Luka didn’t want to be assassinated,

yes yes yes 100%. srsly y’all, the deeply personal bitterness toward Rana, who is a fictional teenager (not even an adult like her hot mess of a father, who somehow catches less flack), is really disturbing. as is conflating this discussion of a comic with creepy patriarchy-laden historical pontificating, and overlooking the fact that Dershing is extremely intentional about all of her work, intelligent enough to include many layers of moral ambiguity because that’s what makes good stories, and fucking OF COURSE doing research on how revolutions, wars and dictatorships have played out in the past. ffs, analysis and discussion are part of enjoying a good webcomic, but analyze yr own shit with that level of vitriol goddamn

Are you kidding me? If Luca was Lucia, a survivor of death camps, a woman who has to wear a wooden leg and perhaps a wig because of her injuries at the hands of soldiers bent on genocide, a woman who has not only survived but led her people into victory, a woman with anger issues who once threw an ornament widely at her husband but would never have struck said husband because she loved that husband with every mote of her being, a woman who then has that husband die in her arms, apparantly because those same people who wanted to commit genocide decided to strike at the deepest level at the Empress… if Luca was Lucia, everybody on this page would love her beyond reason.

If Rana was Prince Rana, a 17 year old who is married off for political reasons to a woman twice his age, I don’t think anyone her would mind half as much, judging on the comments and guffaws I hear and read whenever some female schoolteacher is arrested for having sex with her 17 year old pupil.

If it turns out that Prince Rana was plotting to kill his MOTHER from the day his father died, I’m quite sure everybody would be willing to see a murderous little shit instead of ‘a love-starved child’ in him.

I AM LEFT REELING BY THIS ANSWER because I am enamoured by “ambiguously real” plot points and was amongst all these people who chose to assume fantasy, rather than outright ask if it was
Like you think he’s real for a while but then wonder what he’s doing hanging out on the balcony ready to assuage her at all times

lol, it’s not actually too mysterious, he’s just on castle/ fortress staff, and staff isn’t exactly super well-organized at the moment. I mean, obviously, seeing as Rana has a secret bf unbeknownst to everyone.

is he that guy who’s looking all judge-y at Luca in panel 3 of pg 34? Idk i noticed the dude’s blue eye and unpleased eyebrow game compared to the mildly uncomfortable expressions of the others in that panel. But then again i could just be imagining things :P

With a household in such an uproar, it may be tha something indigestible could make its way into the Emperor’s sandwich, or some mechanical failure could aid him in driving a sports car into a tree, or some such, without it being so awfully clear who was behind the fatal accident. I don’t see why Rana needs to get fingered if enough people want Luca to go down and Suda to be a set up as a puppet Emperor in his place.

The real problem is the Magic Tiger, who clearly didn’t approve of Phe’s pacifism, and is the only player with a motive in the dining room with a vial of poison. I’m with Rana, but for different reasons. Luca is entirely insane, and when possessed is capable of offing Phe, and then in a completely different state, raging with grief and executing everyone in sight for the deed. Whatever plans any of these people make, Luca included, that tiger will be a surprise.

Re: Phe’s death, do we know she was poisoned? Luca tasted all the dishes first. Then Phe took a bite or two and immediately began to cough/choke, while her throat/face and fingers turned bright red. It always looked more like a food allergy to me.

Oh, I have a bad feeling about this. What are the chances he happened to be at the right place at the right time for such an integral moment when she’d be extremely vulnerable and more easily influenced? And that third panel… I don’t know it doesn’t feel right. I have a feeling he’s manipulating her (like father like daughter) and maybe he either works for one of those animal gods or he’s an avatar for one.

Reading the comments now, I’m surprised that not everyone sees Rana as I do – a love-starved child who thinks her father MURDERED HER MOTHER, who feels completely trapped at home with no one to turn to, and gets easily manipulated by the first good-looking guy who pretends to love her. It’s so sad, and so believable.

A headcanon I have: In a household like that, the kids probably spend more time with the staff than with their parents. So, in addition to thinking Luca killed Phe, she also knows that he’s offing staff. She might not take up arms on their behalf, but nor does it help, I guess.

Yes — all three of the kids are suffering from trauma! And they know their father will kill even loyal staff for what may have been only one person’s misdeed (the poisoning of Phe) so of course they are afraid they might be NEXT. Fight, flee, or freeze reaction to a life-threatening situation — clearly Rana has chosen to FIGHT to survive.

Although I’m sure Rana is being manipulated and her father didn’t kill Phe, I have no doubt that Luca could kill one of his own children, given the right provocation.

…is it too much to hope that he’s actually a well-intended person of the staff who genuinely loves and cares for Rana and perhaps even had some family himself offed by the Emperor when Luca made all of his ‘staff cuts’ so he’s motivated both by trying to protect the person he loves and by highly justified personal vengeance making him less of a creepy slightly pedophilic-looking sudden character insert and more of a soon-to-be deeply developed and highly likable male character model?

Haha, true! I think the pedophilic vibe I’m getting is not anything to do with Rana but because I just re-read Mare Internum and for some reason this guy gives me the same willies that Michael’s uncle gave me. For whatever reason. Nostalgia’s sake, perhaps?

Conspiracy Theory: Calling it now, the love interest is a Carissi spy who dyes his hair dark to avoid detection and is using Rana for his assassination plot.

That said, I don’t blame Rana at all. Her dad, as far as she’s concerned, not only hates her guts but is a paranoid tyrannical despot who murdered her mother, kills anyone who disagrees with him or gets in his way, and could potentially have her executed if she doesn’t go along with this forced marriage to some old guy she doesn’t know. It’s not really ‘daddy doesn’t love me’ it’s ‘daddy killed mommy and I might be next’.

Rana’s the one I’m most invested in, so of course I’ve picked someone who looks like they may end up suffering an awful fate?

Phe, babe, you should have taken the girls and gone far away. (Not that I think he’s a great dad to Suda, I’m just certain she couldn’t have gotten away with taking the heir to the throne.) Then you’d likely be alive, Rana and Hyla would probably be happier, and Suda…well. Two out of three’s not bad.

Phe was a tempering influence on Luca though. While she was alive, the worst of Luca’s temper and impulses were kept in check. And we know she has the strength to leave because when Luca hurts her, she straight up tells him she’s leaving. She doesn’t fear for her life, she doesn’t fear he’ll pursue her aggressively (maybe some apology bouquets, but no stalking or threats), she just makes it clear she’s tired of her husband’s hatred blinding him. And she was right. We’re seeing what Luca turned into when she died. But if she left, how would he react? And how would Suda react to his mother leaving him behind? Granted, Suda’s grown and old enough to understand, so he wouldn’t be as screwed up as Hyla would be if she were the one left behind, but it might still leave some resentment and who knows? Suda might have developed into Luca 2.0.
But I could be wrong. If Phe had left instead of died, Luca might have nursed the hope that she (and presumably the girls she took with her) would come back. He might attempt to rule more peaceably and be more open minded in negotiations with Caris in hopes of convincing her that he heard what she said and took it to heart or at the very least, convincing her to stay in the country. Whether he would be successful is another matter, of course, and that’s not how the story played out after all, so all this speculation over what never happened really does is entertain the mind.

I mean, she should have left because Dagre killed her for being there. There was no way she was going to come out of it alive if she stayed. Leaving and staying gone might have saved her from the weird demonic tiger thing.

That aside, I don’t think Phe would need to stay with Luca just to keep him sane. No one is obligated to stick around an unstable, dangerous person and sacrifice their happiness to keep that other person maybe functional. Their last fight ended well enough, but who knows if he would have changed for real? I came from an abusive home background and it looked to familiar for me. This whole arc has been too familiar for me, right down to the same sick twist in my chest I felt when Rana yelled at her father.

Yeah, that’s a good point. In truth, I’m from an abusive home background too, though I guess I was lucky enough to not understand a word of their arguments. I never learned my parents’ native language. But yeah, the onus is not on Phe to fix Luca. It’s Luca’s responsibility to change Luca. That said, aaahhh would really suck to be Suda int hat situation…

anyone else feels that guy looks weirdly like her dad in his prime youth teenage years?
and She stated “he hates me” and the guy said “i don’t, i love you”
She never said he didn’t… sure could just bet he guy saying that way

but making me wonder if her illusion/mental crap isn’t being ghost jacked by somethign weird